Torned
by bellarose-riddle
Summary: Sometimes, Lucien thinks, surviving doesn't mean being able to live again.


"I'm sorry," he said again, though his voice broke a little, and he didn't dare move.

The day of the wedding, when Feyre had been taken by Rhysand, he'd had to flee from Tamlin as his friend, his best friend, trashed around his studio and had destroyed half of the castle in rage.

But then Feyre had gone missing again. Taken from the manor where Tamlin had left her. _Trapped her_ , a voice whispered in the back of his mind, and his heart ached when he remembered her eyes full of tears and her face full of fear as she pleaded Tamlin to let her out. But he hadn't. And when they had come back they had found that she was gone, taken once again by the High Lord of the Night Court.

Weeks had passed since then, and servants were still fixing what Tamlin had done when he'd found out. Lucien had managed to save some of Feyre's paintings, but his friend had slashed most of them with his claws and had clawed the walls and the tapestries too. It hadn't helped that when Lucien had tried to soothe him, had tried to get him to calm down and think, Tam had roared at him, and for the first time since they had met Lucien had been afraid of him. Afraid of his claws that reminded him of the dark dungeons from Under the Mountain.

Lucien had left the room as fast as he could. And for the first time since he had come back from Under the Mountain, for the first time since Feyre had saved them all, for the first time since he had started telling himself that now everything would go back to normal and that all of them would be able to live happily and in piece, he allowed himself to think that maybe that was not going to happen, that maybe they had never truly left Amarantha's own Court of Death and Nightmares.

It was not until days later that he found the strength within himself to talk to his friend. And because he felt that maybe he hadn't done enough to help Tamlin, that maybe he should have tried harder, he had offered to go to the Night Court himself to find Feyre, and bring her back no matter the cost. Lucien had been the one to help her in Under the Mountain, the one to suffer and scream as she fought to figure out the riddle, the one to cower before Amarantha's whip as Tamlin was forced to whip him for helping Feyre in the first task. He had wished he could tell her friend about how staring at him at loving him was harder and harder every day, wished he could tell him that it was that whip he heard every time they spoke. But he hadn't, and wouldn't, tell him, because he knew it wasn't Tamlin's fault.

So instead he had decided to go for Feyre, because staying in that manor that had for decades been a haven for him now felt like a burden that he couldn't bear. The fact that Ianthe had taken it upon herself to decorate the house with roses that were red as blood didn't help, both because he had a feeling that it had been the red flowers what had caused Feyre to panic the day of the wedding and because it made him start shaking and gave him nightmares about a beautiful and terrible queen with hair red as wine and a terrible smile. It gave him nightmares about the eye he'd lost and the pain he had endured. And waking up to see the scars on his back and face helped him little.

Tamlin hadn't refused him, instead he had encouraged him to go, to find Feyre no matter the cost. Lucien wondered if it would matter if the cost were his life. But he had gone, because even if his gut told him that Feyre hadn't been happy those last days she'd been at the Spring Court, he knew that being with Rhysand at the Hewn Court couldn't be any better. He tried not to think much about, because after everything Amarantha had done, he could only imagine what Rhysand could do.

It had been the letter which had spured him into action, the letter that told them to stop looking, the letter that told them Feyre was fine. A lie, Tamlin had declared, a lie written by Rhysand and meant to torment him, because Feyre couldn't read nor write. Lucien hadn't known, hadn't remembered that... and it had been then that he had noticed there was no way Feyre had managed to read the riddle from the second task. He hadn't stopped to wonder much about it, and had left for the Night Court that very same day.

Raising his eyes, he dared to look at Tamlin. His friend's hands were twisted on the table and his claws were out, but he wasn't moving, wasn't yelling. Lucien didn't remember when violence had started to be Tam's first reaction to everything.

"Where was she?" Tamlin finally asked.

"In the mountains," Lucien was quick to answer. _In the mountains with Rhysand, and dressed like an Illyrian, and with wings and talons._

"How was she?"

 _Alright_ , was the first word that came to his mind, _she looked healthy and strong and as fierce as the first time you brought her home. And free somehow._ He had been scared to realize that. Scared to see that she didn't look or sound or feel like a prisoner at all. And he had told himself that it had been Rhysand who had made her behave like that, that it had been his damned daemati powers which had made her speak as she had. Because Lucien wanted to believe that Feyre –his friend, the one who had saved him and the one whom he had saved– would have taken his hand, would have gone back with him to the Spring Court if she had been free to decide. It hadn't been until he had gone back to the manor that he had realized he had _needed_ Feyre to take his hand. Not for Tamlin, not for the Spring Court, but for him.

"She was alive."

Lucien wanted to go back, to see if she really was alright, and to hear what she had to say. And to tell her everything that he couldn't tell Tamlin. But most importantly, to apologize for not being the friend that she had needed him to be. Somehow, saying that Tam had been his friend, his protector, for longer than she had didn't seem like an excuse anymore.

Tamlin dismissed him then, and Lucien knew he'd go seek Ianthe's advice. His body shook at the thought of the priestess, at the memory of her hands trying to unfasten his belt, of her tongue pressing against his neck. Of how he'd managed to throw her out of his room before running to the bathroom to puke. He hadn't told Tamlin about it either.

Alone in his room, he couldn't stop staring at the walls the floor the ceiling, and wonder that maybe not all cages were made of iron and stone and darkness. Maybe, some of them were white and golden and smelled of roses.


End file.
